RIP: Paul Krassner

[alibi_shop]

Paul Krassner was mostly before my time, but I was exposed to a fair amount of The Realist at a tender age and I remember it fondly. Even though most of the jokes were over my head, and sometimes weren't even identifiable as jokes (part of its whole deal was that there was rarely any indication of which articles were satire and which were accurate reportage), there was something about that dry and sharp but also easy-going and flaky style that I could see was special. I'm not surprised that The Realist got only a brief mention in the obit, since it's rarely mentioned by anyone these days and it's kind of hard to really explain what it even was, but I suspect that it indirectly inspired some of the better writing that's on the Internet these days... sort of like what Brian Eno allegedly said about the Velvet Underground.

I had a couple of his comedy albums and I wasn't as crazy about those, but the punchline to the bit about taking ayahuasca with his daughter is for some reason (maybe just the gleeful delivery) one of the funniest things I've ever heard. Krassner and his teenage kid decide to try an ayahuasca trip as a bonding experience. They realize a bit late that the nausea this produces is beyond anything they had imagined. The uncontrollable barfing then causes them to start farting. The farting makes them laugh hysterically. The laughter makes them start barfing some more. And so on. At some point in this cycle his daughter manages to get a few words out:

"Dad... this is... what's known as... QUALITY TIME!"